Reinventing Breakfast A patient asked me “I only eat one meal a day, a kind of late breakfast. Is that bad?” “No,” I replied. He’s a physically healthy man. Though pretty lean, he worries about his weight. I explained that in Army experiments where biddable privates were given only a single, 2000 calorie meal each day, […]

Body Clocks and Food The world is filled with very different kinds of folks – and I’m not referring to politics. There are night people and day people, owls and larks. Researchers have been trying for decades to determine what else is different about them, from their DNA to their diets. Now there’s new data demonstrating […]

Insomnia afflicts the majority of Americans over 65. It makes many people miserable, but can be aided or even erased by relatively simple techniques. Insomnia’s causes are many and complex, including changes in body clocks, types of illnesses, effects of medications, and the process of aging itself (see part I.) Fortunately, most treatments of insomnia, […]

America is increasingly sleepless. It’s no surprise. Insane politics and politicians cause many sleepless nights. But insomnia can be caused by sleep apnea and shift work; hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism; depression and anxiety; alcohol and marijuana; chronic lung disease and congestive heart failure. Just as there hundreds of causes of insomnia, most people who suffer sleeplessness do […]

When You Can’t Sleep Like depression, insomnia used to be treated as a symptom of “something else.” Not anymore. At this year’s national sleep meetings in Denver, it became clearer how big a national and international problem insomnia is – as well as how to fix it. As insomnia researcher Charles Morin pointed out, the […]